Lectures and Other Geological Events

London Branch organizes a series of lectures on a variety of geological themes.   The guest lecturers are drawn from the ranks of professional and serious lay geologists.  

LECTURE VENUE AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, EXHIBITION ROAD, SW7 5BD

Our meetings are held in the Courtyard Rooms in the basement. We have to provide a list of names for the security point, so IT IS ESSENTIAL that you make contact and register if you are at all interested in attending and to get confirmation of arrangements – you can always cancel. Note that the start time for talks is 7.00 pm and we can only enter between 6.30 and 7.00 pm when one of our members is positioned by the door with a swipe card.

Access to the Courtyard Room is usually via the big Bronze Doors just beyond the end of the garden railings. You will need to have your name ticked off at the security point, and will be directed to the Courtyard Rooms by our member on duty with the swipe card. We will all try and leave together. Usually some of us go on for an informal drink, to the Hoop and Toy on Thurloe Place. All are welcome.

The nearest tube station is South Kensington.

Contact  Di Clements

Registering Your Interest In An Event

To register for or ask questions about any or all of our events online, use the Registration Form.

Simply select the events you are interested in, enter your contact details and press the button. The organisers of the events you have selected will contact you and confirm your registration. You can use the form as many time as you like and you are not committed to anything by registering an interest - you are saving the LOUGS money and the organisers' time by registering in this way. Go on, give it a go.

Click here for a map showing directions to the Natural History Museum

Click here for a plan of the Museum showing how to get to the Courtyard Rooms (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

As well as lectures, London Branch also organizes other geological events during the afternoons or evenings.

Saturday 4 February

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING SPECIAL

The AGM will be held on Saturday afternoon of the 4^th February 2012 in the Dorothea Bate Room of the Palaeontology Department at the Natural History Museum.  Access is via the main entrances to the museum either in Cromwell Road or Exhibition Road (not the entrance we use for evening talks) and is a door at the end of the Fossil Marine Reptiles gallery in ‘Waterhouse Way’. It is beside the giant sloth, near the door through to the Bird Gallery. There will be someone on the door with a swipe card from 2.30.  Please make sure you register in advance by downloading and mailing this registration form to Laurie Baker.

The AGM will start at 3pm. followed by refreshments and a guest lecture given by Dr. Alex Dickson, post-doctorate researcher at the OU, on “The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum”.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: geochemical investigations of a 56 million year old global warming event
"Present day observations of climate change and concerns about the effects of this trend on the earth-ocean-atmosphere-biosphere have led geologists to consider what lessons can be learned from past episodes of abrupt global warming. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which took place approximately 56 million years ago, was characterised by ~5-10°C average global warming in period of just a few thousand years, and was linked to extinctions, migrations and biotic adaptation in the fossil record. The sudden warming at the onset of the PETM has been linked to the introduction of vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but despite two decades of research the source of this carbon, and the mechanism(s) that triggered its release remain uncertain. In this talk new geochemical investigations undertaken by the Open University into the PETM over the past three years will be presented. These data record (i) the rate of continental weathering during the PETM, which may have acted as a negative feedback on high atmospheric CO₂ concentrations; and (ii) the effect of sudden global warming on dissolved oxygen concentrations in the oceans. The new datasets also reveal important insights into the possible role of tectonic forcing in triggering the PETM warming episode."

After the talk, there will be the annual London Branch Dinner, to be held at Pizza Express, 7 Beauchamp Place, SW3 1NQ (10 minute walk from the museum). The cost will be £15 per person, payable in advance, and has been subsidised again this year with great thanks to the John Daniels Fund. The cost includes:

Please fill in the registration form and send it to Laurie Baker as soon as possible, and by Saturday 21^st January at latest. You do not have to choose your dish now.

At last year’s AGM, Jenny Parry announced her intention to continue as Branch Organiser for one further year. Nominations are invited for a new Branch Organiser and for anyone willing to sit on the Committee. There is a nomination form together with the registration form so, if you are interested in becoming Branch Organiser or helping on the committee, or know of anyone you want to nominate, find a seconder and send the form to the Branch Secretary, Laurie Baker, to reach him by Saturday 21^st January. Alternatively, if you would rather not take up a position on the committee but are willing to be co-opted for organising the occasional event please indicate this on the nomination form. All help will be gratefully appreciated. Many hands make light work!

If you have any motions you wish to put to the membership at the AGM, please find a seconder for them and send the motion and the names of the proposer and seconder to Laurie Baker by the same date. It would be helpful if you could give the background to your motion if it is not self explanatory.

Please do come to the AGM, you will be made very welcome. The meeting is not just about doing the routine, yet important, business of the branch, but is an opportunity to meet old friends, make new ones and to hear about the trips and lectures planned for 2012. We would especially like to meet new branch members, and those of you who haven’t been able to attend any events this year. Do bring along your field trip photographs as well. We wish you a Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year and look forward to seeing you on the 4^th February.

The 2011 Committee

Thursday 16 February

TALK: Tunnelling under London by Ursula Lawrence **Rescheduled**

Crossrail is a new underground railway through London that will involve tunnelling 21km of twin bore tunnels under and through London's historic infrastructure. The presentation will detail the scheme and the expected programme over the next decade. A brief summary of the geology of the London basin will be followed by an overview of the challenges involved in tunnelling through the geology and the urban environment of London.

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 15 March

TALK: The 2010 eruption of Erta Ale, Afar, Ethiopia by Lorraine Field

The Afar depression has been produced by the rifting between Africa and Arabia over the past ~30 Myr (Wolfenden et al., 2005), and is characterised by ~60 km long magmatic segments where faulting and volcanic activity have become more localised (Barberi and Varet, 1977). The Erta Ale magmatic segment is the most northern in Afar and is the sub-aerial southwards continuation of the Red Sea Rift (Prodehl et al., 1997). Erta Ale volcano is a basaltic shield (13^o36’11.41”N, 40^o39’50.08”E) situated towards the southern end of the Erta Ale magmatic segment which also contains five other main volcanic centres (Barberi and Varet, 1971).

Erta Ale is well known for its lava lakes which have been observed in both the northern and southern pits within the main crater: one of just four volcanoes with long-lived lava lakes across the world.

The first systematic study of the lake began in 1967 (Barberi and Varet, 1970), but a lake (or lakes) are likely to have existed from much earlier than this: reports of a ‘smoking mountain’ and characteristic red summit glow have been recorded by early visitors to the area (e.g. Dainelli and Marinelli, 1907 and Nesbitt, 1935). Due to both the remoteness of the volcano and the political situation, the resulting observations have been sporadic. It was not until the CNR-CNRS campaigns of the late 1960s that the volcano began to be studied in detail (e.g. Barberi and Varet, 1970, Tazieff, 1973). At this time a lava lake existed in both the northern and southern pits but the northern lake solidified between 1988 and 1992 following the emplacement of two lava flows (Vetsch et al., 1992). The southern lake solidified briefly between late 2004 until April 2005 (Bardintzeff, 2004, Yirgu, 2005).

The southern lake again erupted in November 2010, overspilling into the main crater. This was the first such eruption from the southern pit within the main crater since 1973, and the first eruption at this remote volcano in the modern satellite age. Fortuitous timing allowed us to combine on-the-ground observations with multispectral imaging from the SEVIRI satellite to reconstruct the entire eruptive episode beginning on the 11^th November, and ending prior to the 14^th December 2010. Analysis of zero-age lava samples has provided pristine melt inclusions for the first time and analysis of these has enabled us to further our understanding of the plumbing system of this unique volcano.

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 19 April

TALK: Solnhofen by Chris Duffin

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 17 May

TALK: Kurdistan by Paul Logan

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 21 June

TALK: Carbon Capture and Storage by Martin Blunt

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) refers to the set of technologies developed to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas from the exhausts of power stations and from other industrial sources, the infrastructure for handling and transporting CO₂ and those for injection and storage in deep geological formations. All the individual elements operate today in the oil and gas and chemical processing sectors. However, their integration for CO₂ capture from power plants and heavy emitting industry is a challenge and the storage of huge quantities of CO₂ underground raises new issues of liability and risk. The focus of my talk is on the storage of carbon deep underground. I discuss how we can design injection to ensure safe long-term storage. The talk demonstrates that CCS is an important - indeed vital - part of our efforts to prevent dangerous climate change.

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 20 September

TALK: London's Basement and its influence on the geology of S.E. England by John Cosgrove

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 18 October

TALK: Caroline Smith on Meteorites **Rescheduled**

Contact: Di Clements

Thursday 15 November

TALK: Members' Evening

Contacts: Di Clements / Jenny Parry

Thursday 6 December

TALK: Dinocochlia by Paul Taylor, and CHRISTMAS SOCIAL

Contact: Di Clements

To register for or ask questions about any or all of our events online, use the Registration Form.

This page was last edited: 16/01/2012

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